Private Bradley Manning is the solider who allegedly leaked documents to Wikileaks. Whether or not he is guilty of a crime, his present treatment at the hands of the United States government is reprehensible. I had hoped that Mr. Obama would have reversed the barbaricBush administration policies authorizing torture. Torture is evil in itself whether it involves foreign nationals or American citizens, but it should be particularly disturbing to all Americans that a citizen of the United States would be treated in a barbaric fashion. Mr. Obama, unfortunately, has only given lip service to stopping torture by American law enforcement and military officials. In practice, his administration has been every bit as brutal as the Bush administration. One positive development is that there are a number of critics from all sides of the political spectrum who have opposed the brutal treatment of Private Manning; see the link at http://balkin.blogspot.com/2011/03/statement-on-private-mannings-detention.html. With sufficient public pressure, perhaps Mr. Obama can be moved to reverse this atrocious treatment of an American by his own government.